License Agreement / 3D printing question

This is a call out to anyone (native?) with a better understanding
of the wording in (American) legal documents:

I'm trying to understand line 33 of the License Agreement found
when installing the Install Manager but am somewhat unfamiliar
with this dialect of the English language.

Here is the text as it looks right now:
|
| Physical images (3D-print, molded copy, CNC-routed copy, and the like) of Content or any art derived from the Content
| is permitted only by User's purchase from DAZ, via the User's online DAZ store account, permission to deliver User's
| derived works (art), including necessary Content, to an entity that creates 3D-images in a physical medium.
|
| User may then deliver User's art in file format to that 3rd-party to have physical images printed or created, up to
| the limitations set forth in the online DAZ Store as delineated on the purchase page associated with the
| permission product.
|
| These limitations govern (i) personal and/or commercial use| of the physical, printed images; and (ii) the quantity of
| 3-D printed images allowed.
|

My understanding of the first question is that :
Since I did purchase the original product from Daz, at the time
logged in to my own account I have the right to deliver my own
derived works (art) to anyone who can produce physical 3D
OBJECTS.

I am unable to decipher the meaning of the second sentence...
Does anyone have a link to 'the limitations set forth in the online DAZ Store' ?
Is there a product in the store called 'Permission'?

Where can I find more information about the limitations
mentioned in the last sentence?

An older sample of the license agreement (found in the
14812_GenesisStarterEssentials_1.4_trx seem more clear
to my untrained eye:

Line 19:
|
| You may (i) access, use, copy and modify the 3-D Models stored on such computers at such single location in the
| creation and presentation of animations and renderings which may require runtime access to the 3-D Model(s),
| and (ii) incorporate two dimensional images (including two dimensional images that simulate motion of three
| dimensional objects) derived from the 3-D Model(s) in other works and publish, market, distribute, transfer,
| sell or sublicense such combined works; provided that you may not in any case: (a) separately publish, market,
| distribute, transfer, sell or sublicense any 3-D Model(s) or any part thereof; or (b) publish, market, distribute,
| transfer, sell or sublicense renderings, animations, software applications, data or any other product from
| which any original 3-D Model(s), or any part thereof, or any substantially similar version of the original 3-D
| Model(s) can be separately exported, extracted, or de-compiled into any re-distributable form or format. Subject
| to the foregoing limitations, and the rights, if any, of third parties in or to the objects represented by the 3-D
| Model(s), you may copy, distribute, and/or sell your animations and renderings derived from the 3-D Model(s).
| All other rights with respect to the 3-D Model(s) and their use are reserved to DAZ3D (and its licensors).
|

My understanding of the
above is that my legal use of the data inside the installer
was limited to creating animations and renderings. Solid
objects coming out of a 3D printer for example were not
allowed by this agreement. Right or wrong?

Comments

As I understand it the issue is not 3D Printing itself, but distributing the geometry. So if you own a 3D Printer - the use is unrestricted. But if you need to send the geometry to a third party, you need to make sense of that gibberish somehow.

I hope I'm right, because if I ever get a 3D Printer I am making that Cow Chess Set I always wanted!!

As Sockratease says, the section means you need a separate license to have 3D prints made from DAZ content. The standard license covers using the content to create 2D images and animations for commercial use, but not 3D (whether in solid form from a printer or in data form in a game).

You are allowed to make a physical 3D image of your art (containing content from DAZ3D) if you own a 3D Printer. You need to get permission (or a licence) to have someone create the physical 3D image for you.

As Sockratease says, the section means you need a separate license to have 3D prints made from DAZ content. The standard license covers using the content to create 2D images and animations for commercial use, but not 3D (whether in solid form from a printer or in data form in a game).

Thanks for confirming this Richard, that's how I understood it to be.
Could you expand on it a bit though please.

Is getting a separate licence as simple as the person who owns the printer and who would be receiving the files required to make the 3D print having to purchase the items from the Daz store him/herself and if not, how would one go about obtaining a 'separate licence'?

The principle of not redistributing the geometry (in any form) is a simple one, but I envisage the 3D print issue becoming a minefield in the years to come and think that it really needs to be nailed down as soon as possible.

Unless someone comes up with the 3D equivalent of the .pdf file, 3D printing companies aren't going to know if their customers own a separate licence to provide them with the file they require, the customers aren't going to know if the printing company owns a licence for the items they want 3D printing and people aren't going to know if the 3D printed objects they are purchasing were printed with the correct licence or if they are in effect illegal copies.

As Sockratease says, the section means you need a separate license to have 3D prints made from DAZ content. The standard license covers using the content to create 2D images and animations for commercial use, but not 3D (whether in solid form from a printer or in data form in a game).

So what licenses are available for someone who recently inherited an old (but almost unused) 3DSystems Thermojet 3D-printer that can produce decent wax masters for casting one (or more) objects out of that mould?

Not that I expect to do many or large masters because of the cost of the wax...

Edited:

That's really not the subject of this thread... Let's try again:

Since I am the user who did purchase the content from my online account. To me this part of the license is clear:
"Physical images (3D-print, molded copy, CNC-routed copy, and the like) of Content or any art derived from the Content is permitted only by User's purchase from DAZ, via the User's online DAZ store account"

My understanding of the next part of this sentence is that they are trying to state that the user have their permission to send the files to someone who can create the previously mentioned:

", permission to deliver User's derived works (art), including necessary Content, to an entity that creates 3D-images in a physical medium."

The part I fail to get it the following:
" User may then deliver User's art in file format to that 3rd-party to have physical images printed or created, up to the limitations set forth in the online DAZ Store as delineated on the purchase page associated with the permission product. These limitations govern (i) personal and/or commercial use of the physical, printed images; and (ii) the quantity of 3-D printed images allowed."

What? Where? Have anyone seen the "purchase page associated with the permission product."?

As Sockratease says, the section means you need a separate license to have 3D prints made from DAZ content. The standard license covers using the content to create 2D images and animations for commercial use, but not 3D (whether in solid form from a printer or in data form in a game).

The part I fail to get it the following:
" User may then deliver User's art in file format to that 3rd-party to have physical images printed or created, up to the limitations set forth in the online DAZ Store as delineated on the purchase page associated with the permission product. These limitations govern (i) personal and/or commercial use of the physical, printed images; and (ii) the quantity of 3-D printed images allowed."

This product is limited to specific terms of use via the personal request of Anna-Marie Goddard. Please make note of these changes as they are outlined within the End User License Agreement attached with this product.The specific restrictions are as follows:

You may not use the product for any commercial endeavor in any manner which implies its endorsement or association with any product, service, or entity without prior written consent of Anna-Marie Goddard, her attorney(s), or other legal business representation.

Also, keep in mind the original EULA also restricted 3D printing. Because 3D Printing was *never* mentioned, the catch all portion section 4 "GENERAL RESTRICTIONS AND TERMS OF USE" of the EULA where it says:

All other rights with respect to the 3-D Model(s) and their use are reserved to DAZ3D (and its licensors).

It's been stated rather plainly in other threads that we can do 3D printing with our models now.
The limitations part, it would seem have yet to be printed out as they would be on any concerned product page. Products not yet made.

Now I would hedge a totally unqualified guess that legally I could now take my precious 3d file over to a 3d printer and have them make me a model to hold in my hand. But, quite possibly if one has intention of setting up a real world store to sell little models of Genesis, one had better clear it through Daz3d first. That's how I as a member of the "general public" would view comments about possible "limitations".

The part I fail to get it the following:
" User may then deliver User's art in file format to that 3rd-party to have physical images printed or created, up to the limitations set forth in the online DAZ Store as delineated on the purchase page associated with the permission product. These limitations govern (i) personal and/or commercial use of the physical, printed images; and (ii) the quantity of 3-D printed images allowed."

This product is limited to specific terms of use via the personal request of Anna-Marie Goddard. Please make note of these changes as they are outlined within the End User License Agreement attached with this product.The specific restrictions are as follows:

You may not use the product for any commercial endeavor in any manner which implies its endorsement or association with any product, service, or entity without prior written consent of Anna-Marie Goddard, her attorney(s), or other legal business representation.

So if there in no notes on the product page, there exist no limits regarding:

"personal and/or commercial use of the physical, printed images; and (ii) the quantity of 3-D printed images allowed."

If I were to buy a 3D printer, am I technically allowed to make the prints myself without permission? The license seems to say "permission to deliver content to a third party" and not so much "permission to make prints".

Since the licenses to allow 3D printing are not yet available I can't say how they will work, but they are additional licenses - the section of the EULA is saying you need to purchase a license to get 3D prints made (or possibly that the printer needs to purchase, since we don't yet have the details).

It's been stated rather plainly in other threads that we can do 3D printing with our models now.
The limitations part, it would seem have yet to be printed out as they would be on any concerned product page. Products not yet made.

Now I would hedge a totally unqualified guess that legally I could now take my precious 3d file over to a 3d printer and have them make me a model to hold in my hand. But, quite possibly if one has intention of setting up a real world store to sell little models of Genesis, one had better clear it through Daz3d first. That's how I as a member of the "general public" would view comments about possible "limitations".

Yes, I would be surprised if that was not the case.

Come to think of it, the garage figurine industry has a long history of creating "lookalikes" of famous figures / scenes. If my memory serves me correctly a friend / master designer once told me that you can create and sell a figure of for example the Alien without infringing the copyright as long as you don't market it as 'Alien' but 'the SpaceMoster' for example...

I would certainly not set up a shop to sell the (rather unattractive, generic) Genesis figure, market 'Michael5' or 'Victoria 5' nor a PA's morph and market it by that name.

Since the licenses to allow 3D printing are not yet available I can't say how they will work, but they are additional licenses - the section of the EULA is saying you need to purchase a license to get 3D prints made (or possibly that the printer needs to purchase, since we don't yet have the details).

If a full 3D printing licence is not yet available, can we print stuff out with 'L' plates on a provisional licence? :lol:

I mean, if I buy a 3D printer and decide to print 3D figurines, what's the difference with me using my 2D printer to print pictures of them? The additional dimension?

I understand using external 3D printing services, which requires sending those a mesh would be a problem, since distributing mesh has always been forbidden.
As I said, that being already clearly forbidden, what's the purpose of that new "3D printing" rule?

Autodesk through it's free 123D range of products is already enabling users to buy holographic images and 3D prints.
I reckon Daz is jumping on the bandwagon too!
imagin selling holographic renders made to order of your Vickies with a sword at the local arts crafts market!

The purpose of the new 3D Printing Rule is that they're going to issue licenses to make it possible/legal to do 3D Printing.

That's not really an answer to my question, is it?...

What I'm wondering about is, why is 3D printing deemed different from 2D printing. There is no obvious reason I can see (except it's new), it doesn't bear the risk of inducing piracy (you can't extract the DAZ product(s) from that blob of solidified resin), it only fixes the aspect, much like 2D printing. IMHO.

The purpose of the new 3D Printing Rule is that they're going to issue licenses to make it possible/legal to do 3D Printing.

That's not really an answer to my question, is it?...

What I'm wondering about is, why is 3D printing deemed different from 2D printing. There is no obvious reason I can see (except it's new), it doesn't bear the risk of inducing piracy (you can't extract the DAZ product(s) from that blob of solidified resin), it only fixes the aspect, much like 2D printing. IMHO.

Until the home-3d Printers are common, then the figures, morphs and textures you use will have to be "distributed" to a 3d party printing service. THAT distribution is what violates the EULA.

The purpose of the new 3D Printing Rule is that they're going to issue licenses to make it possible/legal to do 3D Printing.

That's not really an answer to my question, is it?...

What I'm wondering about is, why is 3D printing deemed different from 2D printing. There is no obvious reason I can see (except it's new), it doesn't bear the risk of inducing piracy (you can't extract the DAZ product(s) from that blob of solidified resin), it only fixes the aspect, much like 2D printing. IMHO.

Until the home-3d Printers are common, then the figures, morphs and textures you use will have to be "distributed" to a 3d party printing service. THAT distribution is what violates the EULA.

Well, I wish they'd clarify this!

If I ever get a 3D Printer I *AM* making that Cow Chess Set! If there's no clarification by then (don't worry, I'm years away from owning my own such device!) I'll interpret the EULA however I see fit. It certainly is not redistributing the mesh if it's my printer set up.

But the chess set is 32 individual figures printed, and they seem keen to limit the number of figures allowed, so clarification is really needed sometime in the next couple years (earlier for the more financial stable amongst us).

update their license system in a way to reflect the new possible uses the content could have.
That's the point where we don't agree: I don't think it's a "new" use. Printing the result of your fiddling with some software and the bought content is something people did since Poser 1.
3D printing is, for me, just an evolution of printing. Like going from black & white to color printing.
So what would you say if the license stated "you can freely print B/W pictures of your renders, but you need a special license to make color prints"?...

One could argue that a 3d unlike the 2d print gives any other party the possibility to to recreate the geometry by rescanning the 3d printed model again. The original model is not protected anymore.
Of course one could argue that the polygons would not be the same.
I think the possibility to extract the original topology from a printed figurine is more theoretical, as the original mesh will most likely be posed, clothed, morphed, not to mention the resulting print is small (which means low spatial resolution). You could probably do as much with a couple 2D views of the figure from different angles.
If I print a life-sized naked Vicky in her default T pose, one could indeed 3D scan her and create something very near to the original mesh. But the associated cost would be so high it would certainly come cheaper to hire someone to redo the mesh from scratch.
My point is that given the cost and the benefit for fraudsters it's a risk but not a real danger, at least not until making big prints and 3D scanning become really commonplace. If someone wants to get his hands on a DAZ mesh for free he'd rather search the torrents for free than spend thousands of dollars in equipment.

Are 3d licenses really about protecting the geometry and the textures or about a license for a certain use?
It is what they decide it should be, actually. If you build a mesh for an TV ad or show, you usually yield all rights to the production. When you buy stock meshes you only get an non-exclusive license for use.
Poserdom came to be because lots of people (including what was to become DAZ) contributed meshes, making what was initially just a pretty dull and limited app of no real use grow and flourish, spawning a whole ecosystem (which gave birth to DAZ, initially just a department at Zygote). In this context, everybody used the "licensed for use" paradigm, which was the best suited and visibly worked pretty well.
But back to licenses.

The common expectation for that kind of electronic immaterial stuff is that they sell you a license to a non-exclusive use as you see fit, like it happens for instance in the stock photo market. This means you can't resell or distribute the product, you can only use it to do something else with it.
Let's stay at stock photography: Imagine I buy some nice pictures to illustrate some brochure/book. Unlike 3D scanners, 2D scanners are commonplace and cheap; How can the stock photo agency which sold me (use of) those pictures protect its intellectual property?
They will have a hard time, won't they.

Food for thought.

As long as the original shape stays the same one could say that this model is a copy from the other.
But the very second one starts to add morphs and change the shape it will be absolutely impossible to prove the source of the model.

Obviously, but that's an old problem. Take a (copyrighted) song for instance, change enough notes to satisfy the "reasonably different" requirement and here you go. Blatant copies, look-alikes and "strongly inspired" stuff is all around us. But that's life, there is a limit to how much you can protect an idea/design. Imagine some author writes a love story, and then prevents anyone else to write any story in which two persons meet and eventually fall in love...!

Ask yourself: How different has a story in a movie or book to be in order to be considered different?

There are very well-paid IP lawyers who do this for a living... :lol:

I guess in ten years some people may consider to hire lawyers to figure out if they can use the 3d content they purchased today in different stores with technology noone would have thought of to use now.
Well, that's rather theoretical, since in 10 years most of the stuff we use today will be considered so low-res and limited very few would bother using it. Just look 10 years back, it was IIRC when V3 was released. How many still use her, or worse, V2?
Besides, there isn't that much which changed in technology since 2003.

Until the home-3d Printers are common, then the figures, morphs and textures you use will have to be "distributed" to a 3d party printing service. THAT distribution is what violates the EULA.

Yes, but that's a non-issue, since it's already clearly forbidden.

If the goal of DAZ was to give people a means to send meshes to printing facilities, the EULA should not state that 3D printing is forbidden. "3D printing" is an action which doesn't imply or require any unlawful distribution of meshes, much like driving a car doesn't imply killing the owner to steal it.

DAZ's EULA should only state that distributing meshes is forbidden, but DAZ has a special license allowing you to send meshes to 3D printing facilities.

That would had been the proper way, and people would had seen that as a positive point, an addition, not a substraction.
.
.

3D printing is, for me, just an evolution of printing. Like going from black & white to color printing.
So what would you say if the license stated "you can freely print B/W pictures of your renders, but you need a special license to make color prints"?...

If people would need a special license to print in color I guess people living in 2013 would not be willing to buy.
The PA would have a hard time finding a place to sell.

- - -

There is the PA who wants to sell a product.
There is a customer who wants to buy a product.
There is broker in the middle who makes the deal happen.

Each can deceide for their own:
The PA can deceide not to sell his models in a store where 3d printing is included in the license.
The customer can choose to buy 3d models in another store where 3d printing is included in the license.

But they all do not live in a vacuum. They all live at a certain time in a certain market with specific conditions.
Those conditions can change.

So if you have someone new to 3d content market that has no clue how that all works it might very well happen that in some kind of store some unlucky customer buys the license to just print BW pictures.

- - -

There is one more thing that comes to mind when making the step from 2d printing to 3d printing.

Where does it stop?

If you buy a 3d model of lets say a chair. Would the PA that originaly created the chair be happy if you printed a real live chair from his model and then sell it?

At the moment 3d printing uses some kind of cheap plastic.

But what if you extened the word 3d printing and then start to argue that actually manufacturing that chair with a solid carbon or even metal is also some kind of 3d printing?

I guess that really would stretch the original intened use the PA had in mind.

But then again in the future you might find people who say I designed the 3d model of a chair and you can commericially use it in any way you want as long as you do not give away acess to the 3d model file and its geometry and resell that.

- - -

I believe it really comes down to what all three parties want: The PA, the broker and the customer.

And the very difficult task is to find the right words and labels to make those contracts.

I honestly can only point out the flaws but would have quite a difficult time to find the right words to make those contracts foolproof or better futureproof so that reasonal possible upgrades like BW pictures to color are allowed but all possible missuses that were not intended like real life versions of 3d models are excluded.

I totally agree to the above.

Even though printing a real chair to sit in IS possible, one question among others is whether the PA's model is useful for that purpose?

Another question is whether the PA is the actual designer, or if the mesh is a rip off of some other designers (real life or not) work,
the not entirely unknown furniture company IKEA has more than once been accused to copy other designs: Ikea copies Spanish design

Home 3D printing relies on ABS or PLA plastics at the moment, I don't know if any of the new 'cheap' SLA printers has reached the market yet.
Internet based 3D-printshops provide a number of materials: 3D-Printing Services

Titanium (though probably out of context here) is used to print parts for aeroplanes and prosthetics.

Being an original content creator in my own right I do understand the potentially extreme value of immaterial rights...

The purpose of the new 3D Printing Rule is that they're going to issue licenses to make it possible/legal to do 3D Printing.

That's not really an answer to my question, is it?...

What I'm wondering about is, why is 3D printing deemed different from 2D printing. There is no obvious reason I can see (except it's new), it doesn't bear the risk of inducing piracy (you can't extract the DAZ product(s) from that blob of solidified resin), it only fixes the aspect, much like 2D printing. IMHO.

Until the home-3d Printers are common, then the figures, morphs and textures you use will have to be "distributed" to a 3d party printing service. THAT distribution is what violates the EULA.

I have to disagree...

Earlier EULA state quite clearly that : "You may ... the creation and presentation of animations and renderings..."
" ... All other rights with respect to the 3-D Model(s) and their use are reserved to DAZ3D (and its licensors)."

This does not allow any 3D printing at home or elsewhere...

They did not need to mention 3D-printing if they did not want to change the above into something else but
they came out with a new EULA that mention 3-D printing an a way that I for one could not decipher.